Two researchers with the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C., come down on the side of the benefits of wage increases. They wrote that three academic studies published in 2020 did historical analyses of wage increases and concluded that they raised consumer spending in local markets. “Raising the minimum wage directly pushes back against the consumer demand shortfall by providing low-wage workers with money to boost the broader economy,” the Sept. 14 post stated.
Roswell Daily Record
January 4, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 25.7 million workers in the US remain officially unemployed, otherwise out of work due to the pandemic, or have experienced a reduction in work hours or pay.
The Guardian
January 4, 2021
A 2014 Economic Policy Institute analysis found that fewer people in the lower- and middle-classes were actually climbing the economic ladder today. In turn, they made less than their parents. As Intelligence Squared reported, “In the last 30 years, the wages of the top 1% have grown by 154%, while the bottom 90% has seen growth of only 17%.” What led to this phenomenon? Unequal income distribution, where those at the top receive much more than those on the bottom.
Entrepreneur
January 4, 2021
New Jersey is particularly pricey for child care. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average annual cost of infant care in the state is $12,988.
NJ.com
January 4, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, a scholar at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Labor Department under President Obama, told The Hill, “Reasonable time’ is not defined, and its ambiguity will make it difficult to enforce, providing employers an immense loophole and leaving workers behind.” She predicted the change could cost tipped workers a collective $700 million a year, and shift more jobs from non-tipped to tipped.
FSR Magazine
January 4, 2021
39. Black women, on average, earn 64 cents for every dollar a white man earns, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute.
New York Times
January 4, 2021
The disparities run even deeper: Research shows that Black workers’ benefits are less likely to include paid sick days and the ability to work from home, and according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, access to paid sick days is “vastly unequal.” And that’s just about sick days.
NBC News
January 4, 2021
People who live in states that did not expand Medicaid, including Florida, Georgia, and other southern states, are less likely to have affordable care, says Reinert. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the pandemic has widened this access gap: As many as 12 million Americans lost employer-sponsored health insurance between February and August.
National Geographic
January 4, 2021
Workers’ needs are greater during an economic downturn because, with so many people jobless, they have little bargaining power and employers are able to keep wages low, said Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
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For the 20 states that will raise their minimum wages, the effects ultimately should be more positive than negative, the EPI’s Zipperer said.
“Redistributing money towards the lowest paid workers is smart policy, because they will spend it,” he said. “This will help the shortfall in consumer demand our economy faces right now.”
CNN Business
January 4, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute nonprofit, says this could lead to big savings for restaurants, as servers are typically paid much less than workers who usually do those nontipped tasks—but tipped workers could lose out on up to $700 million a year due to this rule change, per EPI estimates last year. “You don’t solve the low wages of the lowest paid workers by taking it out of the wages of the second-lowest paid workers,” Shierholz tells CBS. “You pay them more.”
Newser
January 4, 2021
“All these folks and their families will suffer if Trump doesn’t sign the damn bill,” Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said in a tweet.
The Guardian
January 4, 2021
“All these folks and their families will suffer if Trump doesn’t sign the damn bill,” Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, tweeted Wednesday.
Associated Press
January 4, 2021
One example of this systematic inequality is the ratio of CEO to worker pay. According to the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute as of 2019, CEO’s now make 320 times more than their average workers make, up from around a 50:1 in the 1970s — and the pandemic has only worsened this inequality. Are CEOs really that much more valuable than those who are putting in the actual blood, sweat, and tears?
The Gazette
January 4, 2021
Because of their age, older workers face much harsher consequences than most other age groups during the pandemic, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In some cases, those consequences are particularly bleak, effectively hobbling these older workers for the future.
GO Banking Rates
January 4, 2021
In any case, the extra $300 was a lost opportunity to support the economy in a much more significant way. Wall Street and the think tanks, at least the left-of-center ones, seem to get that. A couple of examples: a JPMorgan Chase report concluded that during the early months of the pandemic, “spending of the employed was down by 10 percent (while) the spending of unemployment benefit recipients increased by 10 percent, a pattern which is likely explained by the $600 federal weekly supplement.” And this recently from the Economic Policy Institute: “One reason it’s unfortunate (that the enhanced benefit) was reduced to $300 is that unemployment insurance is great stimulus. Reinstating the full $600 would create or save 3.3 million jobs; the $300 will create or save just half that.”
Newsweek
January 4, 2021
Yet much is unclear about the course of the virus and its eradication. How quickly can the vaccines be doled out? How many Americans will feel comfortable getting them? And while many of those laid off could receive additional unemployment insurance if the federal relief measure becomes law, benefits for 11.2 million are still set to expire March 7, according to The Century Foundation, a nonprofit think tank, and the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
USA Today
January 4, 2021
In the United States, the chief executives of the largest 350 companies are paid about 320 times as much as the typical worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. At Mondragón, salaries for executives are capped at six times the lowest wage.
New York Times
January 4, 2021
Black unemployment in D.C. soared from 11 percent to 18 percent in the second quarter, according to the Economic Policy Institute. White unemployment went from 2 to 4 percent.
Washington Post
January 4, 2021
Experts point to the erosion of overtime protections as a key contributing factor to the rising inequality we’re seeing in our economy.
“It is one of the things — worker protections, labor market institutions — that have eroded and contributed to rising inequality; to stagnant wages for middle-class workers,” said Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist to the secretary of labor from 2014 to 2017 in the Obama administration.
Marketplace’s David Brancaccio spoke to Shierholz about how we got here and how likely the incoming Biden administration is to prioritize updating the overtime threshold. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Marketplace
January 4, 2021
But even without congressional action, labor activists said they would keep pushing their campaign at the state and local levels. By 2026, 42 percent of Americans will work in a location with a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, according to an Economic Policy Institute estimate cited in the NELP report.
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Because many hourly service workers are Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian, people of color stand to gain the most from minimum-wage increases. A 2018 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that workers of color are far more likely to be paid poverty-level wages than white workers.
New York Times
January 4, 2021
From January through October for the 20 states that will raise their minimum wages one economist at the Economic Policy Institute said redistributing money for the lowest paid workers is smart policy because they are the workers who will spend it that will ultimately help the economy.
CNN International
January 4, 2021
When you look at numbers like the unemployment rate looking like it’s doing better at 6.7%, the truth is the Economic Policy Institute and others think the true number is closer to 11.2%.
MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports
January 4, 2021
An unprecedented level of online shopping means unprecedented levels of shipping so spare a thought for your friendly neighborhood postal worker who has had quite a year. Remember just a couple of months ago that the United States Postal Service, despite budget cuts and last minute dismantling of sorting machines, processed more than 65 million mail-in ballots for the election. The agency is now promising extraordinary measures for the Georgia Senate runoffs and according to the Economic Policy Institute the people carrying on all of that mail are more likely to be Black and veterans than those working in the private sector.
Marketplace
January 4, 2021
Nationally, the federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Atlanta Journal Constitution
January 4, 2021
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute called the 11-week extension of PUA and PEUC benefits in a recent news release “wholly insufficient and guarantees millions will exhaust benefits by the middle of March, when the virus will still be surging and job openings will still be scarce relative to the number of job seekers.”
Detroit Free Press
January 4, 2021
“The employment data is going in the right direction but the wage data is not,” Black said. “Three things must happen. Every employer in the region must commit to wage parity by race today. We’ve been studying it since the Economic Policy Institute first reported about it. We need employer commitment just as they’ve made progress related to gender. At senior levels.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
January 4, 2021
The number of long-term unemployed — those out of a job for at least 6 months — has been ticking up each month and now totals nearly 4 million. As of November, there are currently 16 unemployed people for every 10 available jobs, says Elise Gould, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute.
“It’s hard to think this will come to an end any time soon,” she adds.
Money
January 4, 2021
Economic Policy Institute estimates that undocumented immigrants contribute $11.7 billion each year in state and local taxes but this still does not qualify for federal rescue relief funds or state unemployment benefits.
KFOX-TV (El Paso)
January 4, 2021
“Stimulating the economy to create jobs is crucial,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, “both to the 26.1 million workers who are being directly harmed by the recession because they are either out of work or have had their hours and pay cut, and to the millions more who saw their bargaining power disappear as the recession took hold.”
These
26 million include the officially unemployed, those who dropped out of the work force, unemployed but
misclassified workers and the still-employed whose hours and wages have been cut. The higher the unemployment rate, the more workers will be forced to take whatever job is available, which erodes bargaining power, especially for lower paid jobs.
CNN Business
January 4, 2021